[jeffy90]

There's a shortage of software engineers and we need more students to enroll in STEM. When deciding between an expensive STEM degree or a free liberal arts degree, students are incentivized to chose the free degree in your proposed solution.

[BizarroLand]

But as it stands right now, people are equally incentivized to take degrees for passion as they are for profit, possibly to their own detriment when one comes with misery from poverty and the other with misery from golden handcuffs.

Not everyone is cut out for a STEM career. You can't turn cavemen into electrical engineers if the aptitude isn't there, right?

It's not a big leap to say that some people will prioritize greed over compatibility and end up risking being able to cheat their way through or flunking out / being expelled if they fail with nothing but either a degree they aren't qualified to possess or a debt they aren't able to repay.

A lot of people in IT would be happier as truck drivers, a lot of engineers would be happier as welders. It always boils down to balancing the money with the passion, and the current system is balanced to the college's coffers.

I did preface my original statement by saying that I don't know if there is a good solution. I proffered a solution knowing that it wasn't a good solution because there are things I with my single brain simply am not capable of calculating for, but I believe we can all agree that the current system has some significant flaws that should be addressed, right?

[tharkun__]

This might be a very unpopular opinion here. I'll mention it anyway.

Free tuition.

Germany has had zero tuition university for quite some time. And though they allowed charging tuition again a while ago, it was capped at something like 600EUR (?) per semester. Many universities apparently also went back to not charging tuition again.

It works well enough if you ask me. I got a great education with zero student debt. Was it Harvard? No. Was it a great education? Absolutely. Masters degree. I have a good job and of the people in my study group more than one is working at Tesla, Facebook and Google. More than one of them also have a PhD.

[mrep]

I don't think it is very controversial to increase funding for public state schools so that they can lower prices. USC though is a private school that costs a ridiculous $81,659 a year [0] and I don't want my tax dollars paying that much to a private institution.

[0]: https://admission.usc.edu/learn/cost-financial-aid/

[MandieD]

I’ve spent the past decade in the IT department of a really big German company Americans outside of the auto industry have probably never heard of, and I have yet to meet a German colleague who went to a private university, even up through our CEO.

The very concept of student loans is mind-boggling for them.

[dagw]

The very concept of student loans is mind-boggling for them.

I only know how it works in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but students loans are super common there. Even though tuition is free you still have food, rent, books and other living expenses that all have to be paid for. How do most German students pay those costs?

[tharkun__]

That is the same in Germany. There's something called the "BAföG" which is a student loan.

"Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz" which is just the name of the law but shortened to "BAföG" to refer to the loan itself. You "apply for BAföG".

However this is a loan directly from the government and its meant to pay for housing and food and such. If you get it you also get priority in student housing for example. Of course there is still not enough student housing in most universities and that means if you don't get BAföG you have to sort out paying for housing yourself and getting it on the open market and even if you do get BAföG you might still need to. So in most university cities there's also a lot of cheaper housing geared towards students and living together ("Wohngemeinschaft").

There's an eternal debate over how much BAföG is enough and who should get how much. It's tied to your parents' income basically (unless you worked before, which basically would mostly apply to people that did an "Ausbildung" i.e. were in the vocational system before and have had their own income but now want to go to university.

You have a certain period after leaving university to pay it back and if you pay it back in one shot (or maybe a few larger payments IIRC) then you have to pay back less.

    In 2012, 24% of all students in Germany received financial support via BAföG

Also, because there's not the whole "everyone wants to go to Harvard" going on its much more likely that you can live at home and still go to university. Many students would rather go work on the side and move out though I would venture.

[BizarroLand]

I feel like family is more willing to assist with basic monthly living expenses than covering a $40k/semester tuition.

It's a lot easier to stomach covering a grand a month (shared housing, student works for spending money) by comparison.

[wyclif]

There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money. ~ David "Pardo" Keppel